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Friday, July 9, 2010

So we’ve left the safety and security of canal systems (Erie and Trent-Severn) and
are out on Big Water again—this time, Lake Huron.We’re cruising Georgian Bay, in the northeastern part of the
lake, the area called “30,000 Islands.”

And it really does seem like there are that many
islands—rounded mounds of pink granite sprouting graceful white pines that lean
away from the wind.

Sailboaters famously come here to “gunkhole”—slowly to explore the shallow parts of remote little bays and islands.Rather
than stay at a marina, with its dock, store, showers, and services the thing to do is “anchor out.”

It’s not exactly wilderness camping since
you have all the comforts on your boat—soft bed, three-burner cookstove, fridge with
beer—but you’re pretty much out in the middle of nowhere, and if things go
wrong, you need to handle them yourself.

Everything we know about “how to set an anchor,” we learned
from books. The on-line course we took from Power Squadron even includes an on-line animation that makes the process look clean and simple.

There’s a white cartoon boat; a little anchor drops from the
bow; the boat backs up; the anchor digs into the bottom; and
presto, the boat stops, anchored!

Experienced boaters are doubtless rolling their eyes by now by the way I report, in wide-eyed amazement, details that are common knowledge if you are an experienced boater. But for non-boaters, some context: Most powerboats our size have a bowsprit—a structure that
juts out from the bow—where the anchor lives all the time.It’s right there, ready to go.When you want put the anchor out (or
haul it back in) you use a hand-powered or electric winch. OUR anchor, on the other hand, lives in a metal bin under
the seat in the bow.To get the
anchor out, you have to unscrew some bolts, remove the heavy little round table
from the bow and lay it out of the way on the floor in the salon; remove the
large, floppy, cushions from the bow seat and put THEM out of the way; remove
the heavy plywood cover from the bin . . . and there’s the 50-lb plow anchor, resting on a pile of white
nylon rope.Unsnap the
canvas-and-and plastic window covers and flip the flaps up on the roof, and you
will finally be able to get the anchor out of the bin and heave it over the
side of the boat

As for winching?Our anchor goes out and comes back aboard by Bill-power.Sustainable . . . but a grunt

You might think (I did) that you just drop the anchor over
the side and that’s it.But not at
all.If you drop the anchor
straight down and leave the boat floating directly over it the anchor will
likely pull out.

You need to drop anchor and then back the boat up, paying out
line as you go (the exact amount depends on the water depth plus the distance
to the bow of your boat, so you have to do math.)If the water is deep, you will end up putting out a whole
bunch of line, which means your boat theoretically can swing in a great big
circle and end up grounded in shallow water or on those rocks you failed to
notice on the chart when you chose the anchorage.

We’d done a test anchorage on the Trent Severn, in a place
called Lost Channel.Tuesday
we cruised up Monument Channel to an anchorage recommended in our guidebook,
behind Starr and Galbraith Islands. It was a lovely spot—a protected area with
pretty rock formations where terns and gulls rested in the sun.

We had stopped that morning at Beausoliel Island, a national
park, where we docked next to Paul and Jane, retirees with a handsome steel-hulled trawler they had built themselves (all decked out with cherry trim made from wood cut from their property and a positively spa-like head!). They had decades of cruising
experience and gave us some anchoring tips.That test anchorage? It was in water WAY too deep.

Anyway, this day we’d studied the charts and the depth
finder and picked a spot we thought would work.We got there and ran through our routine. Anchor down. Good! We're anchoring out like real sailors!

Then I made dinner (pasta with Italian sausage in a
tomato-red wine sauce with fresh oregano from our herb boxes, crusty ciabatta
rolls, green salad, and a bottle of Canadian shiraz that I chose for the
picture of the indigo bunting on the label.Yes, Mom, we’re eating well on this trip).

We had set the “anchor alarm” on the GPS. This is a handy little function: You mark your
location and then place a circle around it with the radius a little larger than the
length of the anchor rope. If you are anchored properly, the path of your boat scribbles a neat little scribble in the center of the circle. This display holds kind of a deadly
fascination.If your boat drags anchor,
the scribbling inexorably moves from the center to the edge of the circle and
then across the edge and . . . an alarm sounds.

During dinner the alarm went off.“Oh, we're just at the edge of the circle—it just means I didn’t
make it big enough. We’ll drift back to the center,” Bill said, and flipped off
the alarm.

But the alarm KEPT going off, so we tried re-setting the
anchor. This process involves the captain in the bow, hauling rope and using hand signals to give directions--down 41 feet of boat--to the crew, at
the tiller running the engine and steering.If
you have never done this before, you need pre-arranged hand signals because you
can’t hear over the sound of the engine; you are maneuvering in a small space with toothy rocks hovering nearby; and the anchor is @#$!$%# heavy.The process can invoke marital tensions even between the most compatible
partners who have just had a nice dinner and some wine, even when it’s a sun-kissed evening, even when the air is perfectly
still, and the surface of the water is a polished mirror.

Now fast forward to 2 AM (it’s always 2 AM when bad things happen). A fingernail moon low on the horizon. Starlight reflected in the water. Along the dark horizon, only one single tiny faraway cottage light. The anchor alarm went off again.A breeze was blowing through the window.

And we were headed for the rocks. We needed to re-set the anchor, in the dark.No possibility of hand signals.We HAD to make it work, because it was
hours till daybreak and we couldn’t exactly drive off among the uncharted rocks
at 2 AM.

Obviously we survived to tell the tale with boat and
marriage intact.And now we know a
bit more for our next anchorage.

3 comments:

Thank you for sharing your adventures - a part of my daily routine now. Congratulation on progressing to level four of surviving marriage. And I thought wall-papering a small bathroom with my wife was an achievement. Happy trails.